It’s 1973, and Memphis Riley, who’s just turned 13, has had an explosive fight with her aunt Clover, a 29-year-old woman whom a childhood bout with meningitis left “broken inside her head.” After smashing her guitar, a precious memento that once belonged to Memphis’s dead mother, Clover stomps off down the road. Memphis doesn’t give Aunt Clover’s departure a second thought until that night when her aunt doesn’t reappear. Memphis’s grandmother Naomi, whom Memphis has lived with since her father, John Riley, “dumped” her there “and never looked back” the day after her eighth birthday, is deeply distressed. As the hours, then days, mount, Naomi begins to think that her granddaughter, whom it’s clear she never cared for, might have actually hurt the childlike Clover. Memphis only has two allies in the tiny town of Blue Parrot, her grandmother’s childhood chum whom she calls Aunt Birdie and her friend Samson, and she’s becoming increasingly scared. The surefooted first-person narrative keeps the pressure steadily building, and the reader becomes ever more fearful not only about Clover’s fate, but how it will affect Memphis’s tenuous position in her household and the community at large. Memphis comes to learn the sad lesson that “being born into a family doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll . . . love you,” and discovers that home “isn’t brick or board” but instead “a feeling of belonging.” Matthews’s strength is that she creates no villains, but sees all her characters, even the most deeply flawed, with a compassionate eye. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8126-2775-X
Page Count: 128
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gabriel McCloud, an alcoholic from a family of losers, is dead at 18, an ``inevitable'' end met when he slammed his truck into a tree. Coming in after this grisly moment, readers share other characters' reactions to Gabe's death—and learn why the violent end of a troublemaking McCloud was not so expected after all. Girlfriend Jennie literally goes to the edge of a cliff, where she awaits the tide to sweep away her pain and the baby within her. Teacher Carolyn Sanders mourns the loss of a bright student done in by an abusive background. Gabe's father, remorseful for mistakes of his own that led his son to self- destruct, teeters on the edge of losing his two-year, self- enforced sobriety. Through such perspectives, a complex portrait emerges: a young man with potential who could have conquered his past with the one break no one gave him. The events unfold in orderly fashion, each chapter featuring the distinctive first- person reflections of one of many characters, transporting readers into the heart of this multifaceted tragedy. Provocative suspense of a different color—not whodunit, or why, or how, but what now? (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-31772-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
For Cadnum (In a Dark Wood, p. 55, etc.), there’s nothing like a little uncertainty to throw a top athlete—or a father- daughter relationship—off, headed for a permanent setback. There’s no question that Bonnie Chamberlain will be an Olympic-level competitor in platform diving; then she hits the platform during a routine practice and is not only seriously injured but fearful of ever diving again. Encouraged by an understanding coach, Bonnie forces herself into the water and steels herself to keep on diving. Then comes a blow almost worse than the accident. Her divorced and recently remarried father is arrested for bilking his law clients out of large sums of money. Bonnie, devastated, believes he is innocent, despite the hints from her mother, older sister, and best friend that he is guilty as charged. As the truth sinks in, Bonnie comes to understand that the money that built her mother’s business and paid for her own private-school education (and her hopes for diving) is part of her father’s past schemes—that she is not entirely excluded from his guilt. In this gripping look at family relationships Cadnum finds painful shades of gray for Bonnie to face for the first time; in her will to grasp the manner and timing of her healing is evidence that she is one of Cadnum’s most complex and enigmatic characters. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-87886-3
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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